


Of Life and Death

by Icie



Category: Original Work
Genre: Cunnilingus, F/F, Magic, Necromancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-25
Updated: 2016-04-25
Packaged: 2018-06-02 13:57:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6568981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Icie/pseuds/Icie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A cleric at the end of her training is sent to a mansion inhabited by a necromancer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Life and Death

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sath](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sath/gifts).



With a resigned kind of a thud, Evike lets her bags fall to the step outside what must be the most ostentatious mansion she has ever seen.

Spires run skyward from the corners, piercing the heavens.

Her frown sets in for the long term, looks can be deceiving but any necromancer residing in an abode such as this wants to uphold a certain image, and Evike had been hoping for somewhere a little more... modern, for her assignment.

As she pulls the cord hanging beside the door to signal her arrival, she feels like she stands out against the black of the mansion in her white and grey uniform. A bell tolls somewhere inside.

Nothing but the sound stirs the air, the evening rich with summer and not a breeze passing by. She shifts her weight to the other foot.

She hasn't been given much information about what to expect - most of what she was told boiling down to every assignment being different and everyone has to wait until they arrive - but so far the den of horrors she will call home for the next year is living up to every stereotype.

"Fuck!" rings out to break the silence. Evike raises her eyebrows. The expletive originated somewhere out of sight but doesn't seem to come from inside the walls.

She casts a dubious look at the door. It provides no more evidence of inhabitation than it did before, so, she gives up on that entrance, hefting her bags up over her shoulders again and beginning to circle the mansion in search of whoever swore.

She doesn't have to look far. Around the corner a tall woman hunches over a lump of rock, her hand on a shovel cutting into the ground supporting her.

She leavers herself up then tosses her hair - long and tangled, the colour of autumn - out of her face. Her expression is nasty as she heaps a shovelful of earth onto the freshly turned grave.

"Would you like assistance?" Evike asks, careful to keep her voice droll, lest the necromancer think that she does want her clean, white uniform to gain a coating of dirt.

"Hell fucking no," the necromancer says, shoving her foot down into the earth, leaving a boot-print as she steps off onto the yellow grass. "Pretty sure, if I ask you to do some actual fucking work, I get hauled up in front of the board and my hands chopped off." She flashes her teeth at Evike, who keeps her expression neutral with the exception of a crease that forms between her eyebrows against her will. "No," she continues, "you just stand there and look cute until we get to the real work."

Evike drops onto her luggage, ankles folded tidily in front of her. "I prefer to sit," she says and settles in to watch the necromancer work until the sun finishes its descent below the horizon.

*

A month slips by, and the necromancer hasn't given up her name. Evike realised a week into her assignment here that she never will. Now, Evike can feel herself grow tense whenever the necromancer comes near, the feeling of a building lie becoming oppressive.

The necromancer's moods are variable but there's an underlying pattern to them, as if there's a code Evike isn't privileged to. Some days, she locks herself in the basement or spindly towers out of sight and leaves Evike to her own devices, sending one or two of her creations tend to her in her absence. Evike doesn't mind those days. The cold skinned reanimates that the necromancer raises are surprisingly good company, and make cups of tea better than Evike herself. They shamble around, tidying and picking up after themselves, keeping the mansion clean when the necromancer hasn't given them more specific commands. Evike has identified that there are at least ten of them, but a more specific number eludes her as some she only sees once before they seem to vanish from the mansion. Evike wonders about freshly turned lumps of soil.

Other days, the necromancer won't leave her alone, shoving book after book into her hands with bright eyes and a grin before vanishing to add a journal with three articles on the lifespan and life creation of butterflies into the top of the pile. Evike can say this: she is learning more than she thought was possible. Even if the familiar way the necromancer touches her and slips under her guard with comments that are far too insightful for the crude laughter that follows them set her teeth on edge.

The necromancer never asked for Evike's name, though she assumes she must have been given it when the board assigned her here. Instead she prefers to use whatever takes her fancy at the time to address her. _Pretty thing_ , _darling_ , _cleric_ , _trainee_ , _cute stuff_ and _copper curls_ all feature in her compendium of epithets. The willpower it takes not to yank out the necromancers teeth when she uses some is more than Evike thought she had in her possession. Evike gives the necromancer credit for the discovery.

The necromancer also refrains from referring to names when telling stories of her work. She spins rambling tales that never seem to end in a place related to where they began, but somehow make perfect sense and help to add context to the tomes on necromancy that share equal time in Evike's dreams with the necromancer's smile - an occurrence that Evike can only put down to growing madness.

This is the thread that dangles in front of Evike to pull on as she flips through a tome that was presented to her by a reanimate who pressed it back into her hands every time she set it down.

Evike's breath catches in her throat as she takes in the content on the pages, and she struggles to find it again.

The volume is on the necromancer. It is the first of many, and Evike can only imagine the final number that will be printed before the necromancer tires of life and finally sets herself in the ground for the worms to eat.

Evike's own powers of light and purity confirm the truth of the words, which say the necromancer is more powerful than any other being walking the earth, that a gesture or a blink from her will shift life from body to body like she's moving air. Her comment about getting hauled in front of the board seems like a joke now. She would only have to flash her teeth at them before walking out, certain that there is nothing anyone can do to hurt her.

When she finishes the book and places it on her lap, she notices that the reanimate is still there. She offers it a smile. This one is new - or new to her - with green eyes, wide shoulders and thick hands.

"Thank you," she says. "I'm glad to have read this."

It nods and turns on its heel, walking swiftly away. Evike gets the feeling she'll never see it again.

After a long pause, she rises, her white and grey uniform feeling even brighter than usual, like she's bringing light to the dark. She sets off in search for the hole that the necromancer has retreated into.

Normally, Evike keeps her power to herself in the mansion, only drawing it out to test some new information or try to determine whether an idea has promise, but now she spreads it out, searching for the familiar press of the necromancer's magic, which feels oppressive now Evike knows her imagination wasn't running away with her when she thought she could feel it coating every speck of dust within the boundary of the property.

The density of the magic leads her towards a locked door that leads through to the cellars. Evike purses her lips, and twists the mechanism with her magic. Locks are simply a kind of lie, pretending to seal off a section of the world and make it a part of something else - an easy lie for her magic to undo.

Inside, the necromancer's magic is tangible, Evike can taste it, bitter like lemon and spices. She shoves it out of her nose with her own magic, a crude but effective use of her power.

The necromancer presents her with a grin.

"Ready to get started on the real stuff?" the necromancer asks. Her grin doesn't touch her eyes.

"Of course," Evike says. She knows she is biting off more than she can chew, but she's always been hopeless when faced with a dare.

*

Necromancers must learn from clerics, and clerics must learn from necromancers. Death must know life and life must know death, or the cycle will not be completed and the chain will break, a truth all who use magic understand.

Evike tries not to make a sound as the necromancer places kisses on the inside of her thighs and her fingers dig into her skin as they adjust the angle of her hips.

Death is beginning to know life rather intimately.

It's Evike's own rule that means she is trying to remain quiet. The necromancer could hardly miss the effect her ministrations are having, slick wetness all but oozing out of her, but Evike wants to know how much she understands, and chooses to notice about her, or whether this is simply the latest part of a long life for the necromancer.

Evike must seem terribly young under her touches.

The necromancer chuckles as she moves her kisses up and over Evike, sliding her tongue into her and then up further again to suck on her clit, keeping the action gentle and making Evike's breath catch when she draws off again, letting cool air flow through to touch her already sensitive skin.

Even though she knows the necromancer won't oblige, she attempts to draw her closer with her heel, draped over the necromancer's back, but all she manages to do is arch, curving towards her, and show her desperation.

"Would you like to try this again, little cleric?" the necromancer asks with full humour.

Evike gives up on her silence. "Please," she says.

The necromancer begins the ritual.

It's not something that can be easily put into words, what needs to happen for a success, and Evike can only hope she'll know it when she sees it, or feels it, or tastes it.

The necromancer gives her thigh another kiss, then begins working her mouth over Evike's clit again, pressing what feels like kisses to it as she begins to run her magic through Evike.

This is their third attempt, and thus the most likely to succeed. If they don't then she'll probably need to wait until the seventh or the eighth for a hope of triumph, but something already feels different and she can't imagine this time failing.

The magic lights up the inside of her skin with tingling pleasure, her fingers close in on the draped fabric cushioning the pair of them from the offensively named work table - the only thing the necromancer has ever given a concrete title.

Her breath comes heavy from her lungs and she tries to buck up into the necromancer's touches, licks and more indescribable magical ministrations.

The necromancer's experience is clear, but she responds to Evike's every breath, every twitch, her concerns about being just another in a long line of clerics to send on their way fading, with the warmth of the necromancer's magic flowing through her veins. The necromancer loves life and those who live as much as Evike loves the quiet order of the world, and the ways she can maintain it, unknotting the problems and smoothing them into the necromancer's domain when it comes time.

Evike releases one handful of fabric to tangle her fingers into the necromancer's perpetually dreadful hair, and so she can use it to suggest with a shove that she never come up for air again, that she keep working her mouth over her, licking between her folds and always, always working over her clit.

The necromancer is filled with warm, dark power and it melds with Evike's own cool and bright magic, settling in her gut as she gasps with an orgasm, the necromancer never stopping her movements, and only pressing her fingers inside Evike to work her through it. Pulling wave after wave of pleasure from her.

An age passes with the necromancer finally removing her mouth from Evike's skin.

She feels different within it, like her sense of touch extends past her body. With her hand still tangled in the necromancer's hair, she pulls her head up and forces their lips together.

She can taste herself on the necromancer's tongue, and as she draws back she's faced with the necromancer's grin once again.

Her grin continues as Evike's mind works and her skin cools down off the high of sex.

"You name," she begins, the words slipping from her throat almost without her permission, "it's Kali."

Kali's grin continues as it covers Evike's lips in a swift kiss.

"Got it in one, Evike."


End file.
